Shownotes Transcript
Okay, alex, we are recording at eleven thirty civic time on november first. I am uh time stamp this because almost certainly anything we will say what will be updated or you overtake IT by events by the time this publishers .
from earth two, one, eight, seven, seven for those you coming .
in from different day. How is IT there? Can I? Can I come through your warm hole? That would be.
that would be great, right? This reality, Donald john trump versus kala herr's in this election IT is IT is not nicki Haley a versus Joshua iro or any of the other options are that perhaps would have happened if if a president bitten had realized that he was incredibly old, maybe a little earlier in the cycle on earth, on earth, one, one, three, seven, four. There's a totally different election that perhaps is going a lot Better for reality.
That's right. If that butterfly had just slept at wings slightly differently, we would not be here today. But this is where we hello, and welcome to a moderate contents to Cathy ally released slightly rather, but not at all comprehension news update from the world of customer safety with myself, evalena ic and alex Thomas.
Okay, so we thought of be useful to take stock of where we are to run up to the election, how twenty twenty four has differed from twenty, twenty and twenty sixteen and sort of what to make of the landscape in these last few days. So let's stop without overall thoughts about the landscape. So alex, like in terms of the role of social media and perhaps as importantly, the disco around social media, what are you watching what you're your impression of twenty twenty four compared to the last two elections?
Oh my god. yeah. There's a lot of differences let's first talk about for a foreign n france perceptive, let's talk about what's actually different about the foreign.
So the big difference between twenty, twenty four and twenty sixteen so in two and sixteen the the only made foreign tor that was involved with russia. And the russian campaign in two thousand sixteen was much smaller than the russian campaign in twenty four IT was much more defuse. So in two thousand sixteen, you we've talked about most of times people hurt me and now and there's really two online categories of russian campaign.
There is the troll farm activity, which is really privately run out of vigne processions, private activities, very diffuse, right? Not super target. The election was predated the election by a significant amount.
The number one topic was black life matters really about gain americans to fight with one mother. IT did not have anything close to a strategic purpose for russia. There is the G R U.
Activity which are specifically targeted hurting hy clinton. That was the activity. That was the hacking league IT, uh, included hacking of the visual sea of john podesta and the specific leaking of emails to try to hurt hood clinton.
Did that swing the election or not? Impossible to tell, but IT IT did obviously change the conversation. IT probably triggered a jim comes actions. And so IT IT did have an effect.
But I was probably pretty small, like from what I saw, you could probably pull that off like two, three people, right? So like you're not talking about some kind of massive G R, U Operation. You're going about a couple people on a side project in twenty twenty.
We did not see a lot and there is a lot of american reaction against IT. So what little activity we saw was certainly effectively push back against one of the most interesting campaign, twenty twenty, was by the iranians, and that was detected and dealt with, and that was against trump. Twenty twenty four.
Russia's activity is humongous, and IT is now under the drug command and control the kremlin. Any proposed the man who ran much of the twenty sixteen activity dead because he turned against flaming putin, and he died as we got, and multiple times, tragically, in a private plane crash, once again, as we talked about the safe tip, if you are an enemy of lad, mr. Putin, once again, I recommend not drinking tea, standing by an open window or flying parliament, things that are dangerous for people who are not on the the good side of mr.
putin. And so promotion is dead. The russian activity is kind of under the direct mental control of the criminal now and is of a scope and scale of what we have never seen before and includes now direct payments to american influencers.
This is one of the big differences this year. One of the reactions that the russians have made to the actions of social media and other members of this ecosystem of academia, of research groups of law enforcement, is IT realized. Like, well, why run all these fake accounts? And you could just pay real americans who have big audiences to say the things you want them to say.
And so we've already, as we've covered on the show, had indictment of foreign ents who are paying american influencers to talk about the stuff they want to talk about. And that's a couple reasons why I believe the russians, and they're probably accurate in this belief that is more effective for the message to come from these real voices. We've covered this a number of times that this is kind of a this is something that is exist for a long time.
But this is in uh, a change in how russian influence Operations have happened over the last several years that you have kind of, uh, your african voices, spanish voices all around the world. You see the russians trying to influence local influencers and have the words command of their mouse. But the other reason is because russia has a specific strategic purpose.
In twenty twenty, russia is an a massive war with ukraine, the largest war russia has fought since all or two, what they call the great patriotic war. They have lost, now officially approaching in one hundred thousand men, probably unofficially ally in, in reality, much more than that, lost billions of dollars, a significant portion of their take, reserves of the airplane, reserves of their artillery erps. They don't have a good strategy to out what right win this war.
IT is a terrible still, mate. They are doing pretty well recently. But doing pretty well means they would ve got in a couple, you know, another dozen kilometers ukraine, right? Like it's not going great and the ukrainians are still occupying sovereign russian territory.
On the other side, it's which is not happens. It's again world war two. So this is way more disastrous in afghanistan. Afghanistan helped bring down the south evening. And so as a twenty twenty four, unlike twenty sixteen, there is a real strategic need for them to have this propaganda activity. And IT is to one, support trump in his campaign.
But two, IT is also to get a large chunk of the american populist to be that supporting ukraine is not in our best interest, in fact, that ukraine is an enemy the united states. And in that way, they have been effective that over the last several years, pushing the idea that ukraine is an enemy united states, that the ukrainian war is the fault of joe biden, that um supporting ukraine is only something that democrats do, that no republican should ever support ukraine to make this a partisan issue. They're been very effective in doing that and that is why they're making they are making millions of dollars of payments to american influencers.
That's why I expect we will find they are making lots of payments to last people that we haven't heard about yet. And so that is one of the big difference is the other second big difference is that every boys involved, now that we have the russians, the chinese, iranians and china and iran have very different strategic interests than russia. As we talked about, iran has directly attacked the trump campaign. China has been involved less the presidential, but they've been cut spine.
Something that happened since our last show is we found at the voltage hoon, uh, which hackers who either work for the people's ration army or the ministry security but uh definitely the people's public of china broke into eighty and t verizon and other major telecom networks and were wiretapping on trump, jd vans and other members of the trump campaign as well as people who worked for common Harris IT doesn't have like they they wiretapped the VP herself, which makes sense because she's probably on special government phones or trump advance or perhaps on commercial devices ah but nevertheless, they were accessing internal wiretap interfaces for major telecoms. And so they they are at least doing significant spine around the campaign, if not massive propaganda. And so twenty twenty four is the world cup of spy agencies getting involved from china, russia and and .
yeah I mean, it's interesting given that landscape, I don't know what your perception of this is, but the disco around the role of social dia in the role of foreign ference also seems very different this year to how IT was four years ago.
So know twenty sixteen there wasn't a lot of discourse around foreign ferens and social media in the laugh, the election, because that was the big sort of surprise, which, you know, I don't need to tell you about, alex. And then twenty, twenty was a lot about the fears of foreign ference. And I felt like in the let up to the election, that was what news coverage around that was like wall to wall all the time talking about, you know, the potential for foreign ence.
And I feel like there's been much less of that in the way up to to this election. It's just not as dominant narrative. And I I don't know what's driving that.
I wonder if it's sort of, I guess, a lack of transparently, potentially much less of, uh, I mean, part of IT obviously has gotta be also the lack of researchers drawing attention to this as much as they were in the lead up to twenty, twenty. And and following these narratives is effectively in part because of you. The that research community has been under attack and has stepped back in its role. But i'm curious why you think if you share my perception of of debates around this and why you think the the narrative of landscape .
is so different? Yeah no, I share IT. I mean, it's hard for me to calibrate because like to twenty seventeen in my entire life being see of facebook was, well, my professional life was mostly protecting the company in our billions, users from natural cybertechnologies specked IT was being personally blamed for Donald hr. impressive.
Like that was just continuous of like everybody who'd ever watch the west wing believed that the reason of troubles president was facebook, right? And nobody in the media took any personal fault. Nobody in the the Hillary campaign took A A fault. Like since then there has been a little more naval gazing that perhaps other people had responsibility, other than facebook, for double from being elected.
And I think that you, those retrospectives s have been a little Better now, especially since how now that we've seen how certain newspapers have acted in this cycle, that perhaps things like putting her command emails in, uh, seventy two point front on the front of the new year times h was not the kind of thing that should be done as at me, while also clearing mister trump of any link to russia at the exact same time, based upon, like you know, an F B I agent whose friends are really getting on a leaking to the times that maybe some some other people have some respons sibly there. So anyway, I it's hard to calibrate because that was like my life for eighteen months just just taking that incoming continuously. But yeah, that is kind of amazing considering some of the largest influencers in the conservative sphere of popular conservation influencers were caught taking direct financial payments from the russian government.
And that was a story for, like two days, right? I don't know what to say. Like if you went back in time and you told me, like the biggest, some of the biggest figures, that they were just taking checks for one hundred thousand dollars a week and then like a week later, everybody stopped talking about IT, and then they were just going on and doing their shows and still talking about ukraine like that, like they theyve stopped talking about this time.
I mean, apparently, i'm guessing theyve stop talking, taking money from russia, I hope. But like it's kind of, it's kind of shocking how little discussion and iran again store the email and has effectively blackmailed one of the major candidates, the former president united states and we've stop talking um china has wiretapped wiretapped the former present of united states and the the current candidate to revise present united states of sending senator united states. And IT was a story for like a day.
So I think I know is a lot of news, but like if you turn on IT is kind of crazy because if you turn on. CNN, you don't hear about the fact that china is listening to these guys and that iran has black male and that russia was paying the largest influencers. It's it's all back to like would zoom into account and pencil ana and look at a poll and this is IT is kind of amazing how much it's just horse race coverage and not talking about effect that america's largest, most import nevers aries in the world are have humongous their entire intelligence, empathy, targeted turn influence our .
election yeah I mean IT IT is incredibly bizarre, just the the set of whip lash between the the two news cycle or election cycles. But I I will say I do have somewhat conflicted feelings about this because I guess I always felt that the focus on foregone interference was outsized IT made foreign interference seem like IT was more effective, more pervasive and sort of a more manipur of more more had more capacity to do harm than potentially IT has. Now that's still an open question.
And this IT, maybe there's been a shifting in capacity over the last four years, but I mean, is also the the other thing that this election makes so clear is that this bizarre thing of like you know the foregone interference and being scared red of foregone interference when the disinformation in the election meddling and is coming from inside the house. Um when you have the the people spread with the biggest platforms, you know laying the the groundwork for some some of the biggest narratives that come out going to come out. And we should talk about post election, about vote rigging and sort of voter extra.
They are not the foreigner like we don't you don't need foreigners to be doing all of this this work when a lot of these narrative are coming from inside the house. And obviously one of the big differences here between twenty twenty four and twenty twenty ah is the presence and the influence of elon mosque. And we are unlike the last election where the platforms were doing everything they could to avoid looking partisan ah and they were being beaten around the head for looking anything that looks remotely or felt remotely biased or even anything that wasn't remotely bias, but could be spend that way. Here we have the owner of a platform constitutional sly bold's unabashedly going all out for one candidate and using his platform both literally he's like the the platform that he has as a person in public discourse and the platform x uh to push as much for trump um narratives and and propaganda that he can this feels like huge way lash given of the the amount of I mean obviously the hypocrisy hear about concerns about the bias social media platforms that is just like stunning but also I mean in that context is forever n formation really the big thing that we should be focusing on or we have this this other problem of the domestic narratives uh being seated here um that are gonna come back in the days after the election .
yes so that is a huge difference is is the musk issue um so yeah just get back in two thousand sixteen and twenty twenty. Twitter was trying to be neutral. Now lots of conservatives argue that twitter was not neutral. Al decisions, they may were not usual the the the big piece of evidence was their decision to first block for a short period of time the hundred five and laptop story in two thousand and twenty um which in the end had A A massive rozi and effect and made to go much wider and larger than the otherwise would a much larger number people found out that uh hunter biden was a coke h than the otherwise would and I think in the end IT IT obviously did not change anything in the election if anything had a negative effect uh for jo bite. And um the fact that they blocked IT turned out not to be russian inference as we've talked about multiple times here.
I think they made mistake blocking IT because I was not for my perspective, their place to make that decision that was the place of the europe post to verify whether or not the information was true, whether they're been yet IT was part of influence campaigns not, but nevertheless is becoming he humongous castle lab on conservatives leading to hearings, entrepreneurs in lots of lots of arguments. And now elon must caz blocked the j. Evan cda. He is banned people who have, who have criticized him and criticize trump. He is down rent content, the water street journal just found that if you create a totally neutral account that shows no interested in politics, all you were pushed pro trump content and musk content um that you are told to follow you on musk in your .
post lost of content so like and anyone that has .
used the platform for .
twenty seconds in the last that we do right and and .
they have mux, is made IT impossible. He sued the scent of countering digital hate and media matters. And he has start in lots of other people. He has changed his terms of service nuclear liquidated damages if you scrape his content. So he's made IT legally impossible to try to study and name of this.
So a good on the journal, uh, for a publishing stuff, even though you for a Robert erdos paper for publishing the truth about this, that twitter has become straight up A I won't even call the fox news of social media because it's way worse than that, right? Like the IT is absolutely positively IT is much closer. I mean i'll get proto seen this but you want mask is becoming uh your vigny program to trumps putin um he his goal is to becoming all the ark he he is basically said he has been promised a position in the government.
His wealth is based upon government. Largest tel only exists because of humongous government subsidies, most under the oba ministration that made IT possible for tesla to compete against traditional internal combustion cars. And I think that is fantastic.
I think we needed the government to intend devise electric vehicles. I bought a tesler in that era. I benefit from the tax credit ah that I gotten the tax breaks.
I got ten and that was great. That's one of the reasons why I was constructive for me by tesla. And I think that was right.
Space sex, there are number one customers. And I says government spacebar is one of those things that the government does on behalf of all of a text payers. That's great.
But you, I must, makes a lot of money from the government. And he has been told that he will get benefits from the government, that he will be part of the government, and he want to be all guards. And so he is using his platform to benefit one candidate for a clear financial benefit on the back end.
I mean, it's it's kind of amazing. Keep serving what we've all had to put up with some of us literally who have been suspended and questioned and threatened and attacked over over again by people who you got. You were mad that I had nothing do with the hundred thousand laptop that i've been blamed for IT over over again. And that was nothing about that. A dozen things .
that muss has done. Yeah, look, alex, I know you sufficed, but I SAT through hours and hours of congressional hearings, watching them on my left of home. And that was like, orter, I know, is really hot. I I watched these congressional hearings with these, you know, members of congress, ted cruz, screaming at jacox. Y, who are you to decide for the american people .
what they should see and they hear?
That's right. That's but this year, no, I I hundred percent. I I had a Better stick here. But I say, like the stunning hypocras. Y right is not like we all SAT through these hours and hours and hours of these people scream at these, take executives about their supposed red political bias.
And now, without shame, not a word, not a peep, the occasional concern that maybe some of the other platforms are still biased against conservatives. I saw the attorney general, missouri, was concerned that google was suppressing searches about trump. Like that are still in the atmosphere。 And I don't think for a second that you know any other platform could get away with anything that look like conservative anty, conservative bias and ever almost just like know that how that forms work these days. I can do you think that they would still hold the line against the other social media platforms?
And yet here we have a lot. The the situation I think that really captures is just happen the last couple days. And so there was A A video posted putatively by hatin immigrants.
So a man poster video, resaved, I am from hate. I came illegal ally to this country, black me and with an accent, did not tell the inherent accent to me. And he's going to vane with some other people.
And he's like, I was brought here six months ago, and then I became a citizen and I have all these ideas and he shows a bunch of of georgia drivers like things that he says, are George's a driver's licenses? And I just voted in one county, and i'm driving, been driving right now to another county to vote six month. My friends, we're going to vote many, many times. And e post this on twitter and he gets huge play.
I mean, that's the first lesson of voter fraud, right? Is that when doing voter fraud post on twitter, that's just key step.
right? And so the sectary save georgia, brad raf burger, a republican who was the secretive state in twenty and twenty, who famously was asked by president trump to find ten thousand votes somewhere i'm not sure in couch. No, this discussion has been had mutual times, uh, and is going to be litigated of what he meant.
I find, uh, I think we all know what what he meant. Um ref worker posted tweet, this is not happening, right? Like people are not coming from hate getting a bunch of like fake ideas or real. I mean, this guy is basically saying he was able to come asset in six months and then get become assistant six times. I mean, like it's very confusing.
Like what the actual thesis is he illegal immigrant or not? Is he legal and citizen or not? I mean, he's basically saying he's a citizen, but he's able to vote six times, but he's claiming he's voting dozens and dozens of times at mutimer counties in georgia.
Now first of like if you're going to riga election, the dumas possible way to do IT is to import tens of thousands of patients and then maybe make them citizens or not, which is like not something you can just do, but then give them a bunch of fake ideas and have them vote actually physically, and then of course have them make videos about IT yeah like go put IT on tiktok like that just probably not something that actually going to happen right? Like, clearly, clearly fake. It's also very, very russian, right?
Like this is exactly what you've seen over and over again from russian actors. Is the incredibly obvious video like this, and that they they pay somebody to say something like this. IT has happened over, over, over again.
So bad reference were good. Tweet like this is not happening. This is so incredibly fake.
This is of all the things have not happened. This is not happened the most. This guy has never voted. He is not voted in.
He is not in georgia, probably if he's in a georgia IT is georgia of the country next to russia. IT is not George of the state. Nothing, nothing demonstrated that he was Georgey. He was just like in a van, right, like they didn't show the outside.
It's not like they shoot that said in the poor gan place like current me next a peach tree or something or hear him at the campus of the university, George, right? Like there's nothing that showed geographically that he was in georgia. And and so bad reference is like, please, you, I must take this down, which, of course, that is a basic of censorship. And what happened a couple hours ago, the DNA and the FBI traced the back and said, yet we traces, this is russia. This is a russian degeneration campaign, which, of course, you on musk saying is not true, and he's refusing to take IT there.
So yeah.
yeah, which is, this is exactly. So this is the big differently now and then is that, I mean, musk is not just has not just taken out the team that used to intentionally look for these things, but he is intentionally amplifying russian determination that is trying to drive this. So we're in a completely different world now when the most important platform on the right now, twitter is not the most important social network overall.
But what he has done he has we assembled the fracturing of the mega universe that happened after generate six on social media on two x and so this this kind of thing is incredible dangerous um and and he's created this kind of election integrity center where people just to post these videos. And what's more dangerous than this because these guys are like they're probably actually in africa being paid by russia to do this. So you they're not in any physical danger.
What's much more dangerous is that you have people, because kate harbert talked about participatory disinformation, where musin trump are telling people is being stolen, go look for IT. So people were out there. Anything they see, there's an odd it's being stolen.
And so people were out there video taping postal workers in postal uniforms, delivering boxes that say, united suites le services on IT with ballots and I go, look, the ballots are being, it's the fake baLance and so they're taking videos of postal workers and then those people are now their lives will be endanger, right? And I think that's that's what really, really scary now is the the fact that people are being worked up into a froth, and that twitter used to be a place where they were trying to stop that, and now to places intentionally amplifying that. And i'm really, I really am afraid that something going na die in this selection, that somebody y's going to an election worker or postal worker or a volunteer is going to die. And that's going to be tragic yeah.
In terms of like practically impact on the serve scary scenario, I totally agree that the individualized sort of threats against people in this participatory action that happens based on these, uh, narratives is one hundred percent one of the the most concerning things happening in the in the lead up to election does to be watching on election day.
And then I guess in terms of practical impact, I mean, one of the things that is obviously happening here and that we should talk about is what happens off to the election, right? Because part of this is all about seeing the ground for certain narratives to flourish flower post election, about voter fraud, or about a read direction. If Harris wins that these narratives have been seated in advance and what are the platforms going to do uh in in that case um and this obviously this was the big question also in in in the last electrum.
What did the platforms do about claims of a vert ford and election rigging post election and then in in the lead ups to january six? And you know, IT is not at all surprising that mos cousin taken down this video. And what I don't think we should expect that he will take down things like this in the you can down.
I expect him to personally people .
amplify IT exactly one hundred and both possible from his account. And then who knows what the algorithms are amplifying on the platform itself? I don't know what we might expect other platforms to do. IT seems to me unlikely that they're going to take that course.
I mean, that seems like they probably are going to toe the line that they told last time, which is to try and seem unbiased and so or maybe not be totally aggressive, but still take down the worst of IT. And I guess the question is how much like you said, twitter is not the most important platform overall, but IT is the most important platform for the right, is where the right is. So how much should we be worried in the aftermath of the election that these narratives are playing out on twitter?
I think extremely worried. I think there's two paths we worried, right? So there's the legal democracy path in the violence path. I think in the violence path we should be worried about x of radicalized in people and then driving them to the place where I think Operationally things are going to happen is probably telegram, right?
Telegram continues to be where you have kind of the post q anon proud boys in the other groups where people are are saying really radical things, although after draw of arrest, people start to realize, await this. Is that all magically Henry's ted and you all of this is is being archive? Perhaps not not so much on telegram.
Maybe there are some other platforms, uh, that some of these people have been moving to. But for the driving the radical zone message, I think x will be the biggest one. Telegram will will be up there.
The the other thing, I think a lot people are afraid of h, and this is more like a ricket, a reaction. And the other, the election law experts, is the difference. Now, in twenty twenty, is that there are a bunch of maga people who are in positions of power.
And you don't just have like the worst lawyers in the world. You have actually reasonably good lawyers, are at least educated lawyers who who no longer care about democracy, who are in a position to try to throw the election. And we are going to try to, who are you? Trump was caught at his mr.
Garden of, like k. Mike Johnson, I have a secret, a ha, ha, if you will, try to figure out what that is. And one of the theories is that one option is that it's unclear kind of constitutionally what happens if you try to decrease the number of electoral votes that are actually cast, right? Like there's some theories here um that could could trump win with less than two hundred several toal votes.
Know what what kind of c trickery could be done before january fifth, january six? What could be done in december? How is the actor contact being interpreted? So I think like that's a kind of stuff that if you cause chaos using x, if russia causes chaos in the vote counting, if you cause violence, if you're able to, you know, we already have people burning ballot boxes, right? So if you're able to get people to cause chaos on election day to make a hard people to vote violence on election day that causes a bunch of court cases, could you create a situation in which in some swing states, IT gets thrown, that you get trumps allies in the legislature to say, we can validate this vote, we cannot say the lector, and they get sent to the house, and you end up a really sketchy constitutional outcome that is not supported. And I think like that's the nightmare for american democracy, right?
Well, that's one nightman for american democrat. Obvious ly in that world. I guess Harris has one on the legitimate counter. Then there's all this concerned about vote rigging. Obviously, there's an another possible future. And as we sit here today on november first, when none of this is a an issue, brackets happily, question, remark, uh, because not happily, because trump is one. And then this a completely different parity.
right? Trust everybody thinks the election was. Secondly, all these concerns, I go.
everything was great. But one more of focus, I imagine, in that universe on the role of social media. Again, swing back into like this discourse that we haven't been having about the role of social media in the run up to the election, I think, comes back with the engines in the aftermath of a trump win where there's reduce.
Although I think this time, I mean, I think I think you have to focus on social media, but it'll be in the larger context of biding decision, not drop out in the context of the two sightings of the media has been doing right like this week. You know, I didn't had a gaffe about trump supporters and garbage, which is a gaffe, but I got as much play as trump saying that basically equivalent things every single day for the last two years. So like you, so that's the kind of thing that I think people are not going to put up with like they're not going to allow them in your times set to blame all on facebook.
No, bless alex. That's such an optimistic take that's so sweet that you think.
no, I really do you think things I really do you think things are different this time, right? I really do think things are different of like the people have noticed that there is a among kind of the journalist class, there has been a push back, unlike the Normalization of of the maga part of the political right that is just does not fit kind of the the needs of the moment.
right? Jeff bases also gave us A A handy a helping hand to renew focus on a on the maintaining media again this week in the role that he plays in Normal ized. These claims are not calling .
them out yeah I think the other part here too is this isn't like two thousand sixteen people to say really know anything about trump, right? Like twins sixteen was really about Hillary is he was like trump was like this weird mystery like you he's like this. Yeah, people who are voting for trump know what he was the going now.
And so like the trump wins, it's because americans made that choice. And it's like, I think one number of people have said and I would feel the same way, like if role legitimately wins, if americans legitimately choose him IT says something much more about the country than that says about russia or the media or social media or anything. It's like americans to know what they want, and they.
Don't care about democracy. They don't care about the constitution on and they do care about these other things more about than those things. Nobody should be surprised. So it's like it's I don't think you will be about that. I think you'll be like we just a lot of people didn't think with a lot people turns out we are living in a different .
country then without we were well well not happy note um we will obviously have to reconvene off the election.
Where do you have yeah 是 欺负 说服力 他 什么 他 对 on .
my body and my go back up at all times。 That's right. That's I mean as the nice .
thing that we still have november red a january right like will will be thing and see if the qantas flights of the one way tickets get .
right so that our dise OK let's finish with the short story to introduce some levity because this is a fun story and I just think it's worth mentioning. We've been talking a lot about russia.
And so uh, a story that caught my eye this week, which I think is fantastic, is apparently a russian code has google um twenty distilling dollars this week for taking down certain um russian state sponsored nels a and content writers which is against russian law. Um youtube is doing this because of A U S. Sanctions on those entities, but this is a five that has been compounding and is now up to a twenty to thirty three zeros. Uh and blessed times.
it's really too exactly actually in rivals. So we actually thirty seven digits when you at the time U.
K. Did some great reporting putting this perspective for us. So this a figure that a vastly exceeds the world combined GDP. IT is more than the a number of grains of sand on earth or stars visible in the sky. And IT would take google, which, you know, not a small or poor company. IT would take IT fifty six point six five a tillion years, which is more than four trillion times the age of the universe, to pay IT off current profit abilities. So I think that's fantastic. The press secretary for the russian president uh, of putin, demetria sc of this week told reporters that the the figure was symbolic and should be a reason for google to pay attention uh to the moscow arbitration courts order um which I think is is is charming because uh if anything I find of that size seems truly hilarious and not at all serious uh and and a reason to to not pay IT engine but anyway that I I thought that was a quite a areas and but worth mentioning on the on the show right so you know .
how they got to this number, right? So this this is actually is a great add on to you know so is the old story of like the king who was like you put A A grain of rice on every every square of the of the chest port. Well, that's exactly how they got here of like they are ordered to restore the an account, right account that were banned after the invasion of ukraine in twenty two.
They had to restore the account. And there's a fine of one hundred thousand rubles per day. And the fine was a double every week. But no one. So it's a perfect it's like this is a great like .
for teach going to say financial literacy lesson about compounding interest kids and this is why you is why you should put your put your money in in interesting in accounts exactly right. So with that, yeah this whatever .
something grows over in school, right? So this is anyway anyway, because you you do not want to pay a fine when something is. Always, always ask for a geometric time, not exponential.
I can't wait for the fine to hit a google google dollars so that we have the nice siety of a google find on google. Yeah, we should .
actually calculate when I get there, I shouldn't be .
that trade. The current rates exactly. All right. Well, we will reconvene, I suppose, on the other side of of the election and see which of the many possible future universes we are in in, in this a, in this world, two, four, six, eight or whatever IT was.
And with that, that is being your moderated content. Not so weekly update h. This show is available in all the usual places and chunes and transcripts are available at law of stamford, eu. For a flash. Moderate content is produced by the wonderful brian pillar, and special things also to lily chain and rob hofman, and talk to you from the other side.